Posts from the Pastor of Richmond's First Baptist Church

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Month: May 2010

I’m back from two weeks in Mexico, and, as promised, there are stories to tell:

I started my adventures in Puerto Escondido, a little town on the Pacific coast of Mexico popular with surfers for its enormous waves. I didn’t go there to surf: I went because my brother-in-law, Chuck Treadwell, was celebrating his fiftieth birthday and invited me to come along. We stayed in a beautiful house near the beach which was available partly because Chuck has some very generous friends but partly because it is so hot in Puerto Escondido in May that no one in his right mind would go there.

Need I say more?

We tried to make the best of it, however, and in one three-day period I caught a 70-pound sailfish, got up on a surfboard, and went swimming with the dolphins. In the interest of full disclosure I should probably say that I “helped” catch a 70-pound sailfish: the first mate on the boat actually set the hook, Chuck and his friend Patrick McCoy spent about thirty minutes fighting the fish, and then they let me reel it in toward the boat where the first mate brought it aboard. And when I say I “got up” on a wave I mean that I was able to get to my feet on a ten-foot board (the surfing equivalent of training wheels) at Carrizilillo Beach (the Puerto Escondido equivalent of a baby pool). And, finally, when I say that I went “swimming with the dolphins” I mean that I put on a life jacket and jumped into the water in a part of the ocean where we had just seen some dolphins. I swam, and there were dolphins in the same ocean, but to say that I swam with the dolphins is a bit of an overstatement.

Just like saying I climbed a 17,000-foot mountain.

I went from Puerto Escondido to my brother Ed’s house near Cuernavaca. Ed is a missionary there. He and his family have been living and working in Mexico for eight years, mostly developing a Christian camp where he hopes to reach 10,000 Mexican youth for Christ. When I got there it was nearing the end of the dry season, and most of Mexico was parched and brown. And hot. Did I mention that it was hot?

Ed’s characteristic solution was to try climbing to the top of a 17.000-foot mountain, a dormant volcano called Iztaccihuatl (which I won’t even try to pronounce). He promised that it would be cooler up there than it was in Cuernavaca. In fact, he had asked me to bring along all the winter clothing I could stuff into a backpack so we could stay warm during the climb.

We took along two of his sons and two of their friends and made our base camp at 12,000 feet. We spent the whole next day getting acclimated to the altitude (and the delightfully cool temperatures) before starting our assault on the mountain at 3:00 the next morning. I went up with the first party—three of us, sporting head lamps to cut through the darkness. We got to 15,000 feet just as the sun was coming up and spent the next four hours gasping for air and clawing our way up to the summit only to discover that there was another, higher, summit about a half mile away. We hiked down into the notch and up the other side, using the last of our strength to get to that summit only to discover that there was yet another, higher, summit about a mile away from that one, and it was on the other side of a half-mile-wide glacier. We sat there for a while, catching our breath and watching as another group of climbers made its way across. As we were watching one climber slipped and fell and started sliding downhill toward a rocky ravine before stopping himself with an ice axe. Since we didn’t have ice axes (and honestly, if there had been an elevator to the summit at that point I’m not sure I would have had the strength to push the button), we decided to call it a day. Our elevation at that point was 16,800 feet, about 300 feet shy of the highest point. We were disappointed, but not defeated, and on the way down began to talk about coming back again someday with the proper equipment.

The rest of the week was less adventurous but deeply meaningful as I learned more about the good work Ed is doing there at El Monte (the name of his camp). I heard reports from Mexican missionaries, who are being trained to go to places like Germany and Indonesia with the good news about Jesus. I saw Ed’s plans for adding additional cabins and another soccer field to the camp, to make it even more inviting for the kids who will come there. And I did some sightseeing in the little town of Ticuman, where a generous farmer gave us a complimentary bunch of bananas (see photo above). I picked up enough Spanish along the way to negotiate the taxis and buses necessary to get back to the airport, and at 9:35 last night I touched down in Richmond. It felt so good to come home, and to unlock the front door, and crank up the air conditioning.

I’m heading to Mexico for two weeks, half of which will be spent relaxing in Puerto Escondito, and the other half visiting my brother Ed, a missionary in Cuernavaca. I would appreciate your prayers for safe travel and safe return, and when I get back…

The deacons of Richmond’s First Baptist Church spent approximately three hours considering a motion that would allow Christians from other denominations to join the church without being re-baptized. It was a big decision for our church. As one deacon put it, it would break a 230-year tradition. But at the end of the night the deacons approved the motion, which will now go on to the church for final consideration.

One of the things that impressed me most about last night’s meeting was the spirit in which it was conducted. There were people who spoke for the motion, who were treated with respect and courtesy, and people who spoke against the motion, who were also treated with respect and courtesy. One of our veteran deacons spoke in favor of a motion to amend, a motion that was later defeated. As soon as the vote was counted he stood up and said, essentially, “It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, but I’m going to live with the outcome: that’s the way Baptists do it.” And then we went back to considering the main motion.

No voices were raised. No threats were made. No one walked out. No one left in tears. Throughout the evening the deacons of Richmond’s First Baptist Church conducted themselves like real Christians, even as they wrestled with a big, tradition-breaking decision.

I’m proud of them.

At the conclusion of the meeting we sang, “The Church’s One Foundation,” and then we shook hands, hugged, and spoke to each other on our way out the door. I looked around for some I knew who would have been disappointed by the outcome but didn’t see them. I tried to think how I would feel if the vote hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to. I would have been deeply disappointed. I may not have wanted to stand around and chat afterward. But I think I would have appreciated the way the decision was made and on the way home I hope I would have had the grace to say, like that veteran deacon, “It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, but I’m going to live with the outcome: that’s the way Baptists do it.”

I know a woman who doesn’t want to be part of any Christian denomination; she just wants to be a Christian. She says, “I don’t want to be a Methodist (and you really have to hear her say it to understand just how much she doesn’t want to be one, even though she grew up in that denomination and married a Methodist minister), I want to be a Christian!” She points to that passage in 1 Corinthians 1 where Paul says he has heard about some who are saying, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” And then Paul says (and you would really have to hear him say it to understand just how much he is horrified by the idea), “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor. 1:12-13).

This is this woman’s argument precisely: that Christ is not divided, that John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) was not crucified for her, nor was she baptized in the name of John Wesley. She was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. She wants to be a Christian, dadgumit.

And so I told her about Christiantown, an imaginary place where people live together in perfect Christian unity. I said that in Christiantown the Methodist family might live next door to the Lutheran family, but both families live in Christiantown. There are lots of streets, with lots of houses, and lots of happy families living inside. There are Baptists, and Presbyterians, and Catholics, and Pentecostals, and every other kind of Christian you can imagine, but what they have in common is a shared commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord. No matter how much they love their respective families they know who was crucified for them, and in whose name they were baptized. They know what makes them one.

I tell this woman that what she doesn’t want to be in Christiantown is homeless; she doesn’t want to wander the streets forever, looking in through the windows as families are sitting down at the supper table, as they hold hands and say grace with the glow of candlelight on their faces. She needs to become part of a family. She needs to find some Christians with whom she can enjoy that warm, nourishing fellowship, and with whom she can worship and serve the Lord.

So, I’ve encouraged her to visit some churches, and find a good one, and join it knowing that she is not abandoning her commitment to Christ, but only finding a home in Christiantown. I hope she will do it, and I hope that family—whatever its name might be—will take her in.

I thought I had said everything about baptism and membership that could be said, but here’s one more thing:

I’m realizing the role fear plays in this decision.

Fear, as in fear of the unknown, as in, “What will happen if we let Christians from other denominations into our membership without re-baptizing them? Will we end up with a church full of Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians?”

And this is where I recognize that I have an advantage over so many at First Baptist, because I’ve been a member of a Baptist church with an open membership policy. In fact, I’ve been a member of five such churches, and all of them had made the decision long before I arrived on the scene. Before coming to Richmond I had never experienced closed membership, and that’s why it was such a shock to my system (in the same way it has been shocking to some people to suggest that we change our membership policy).

The fear of the unknown often leads us to imagine the worst. When this church was trying to decide what to do with two Nigerian students who presented themselves for membership back in 1965 weren’t there some who feared that if we let these two in the church would soon be “overrun with negroes”? That didn’t happen. And when we decided to ordain women as deacons and ministers a decade later weren’t there some who feared that soon all our deacons, and all our ministers, would be women? That didn’t happen either. As for those who think that if we open our doors to Christians from other denominations “we might as well take the name ‘Baptist’ off the building,” I beg to differ. I’ve been in churches like that. In fact, I’m thinking of the first church I served as pastor, the First Baptist Church of New Castle, Kentucky, where:

We had a men’s quartet—the “Gospel Echoes”—led by the rambunctious piano-playing math teacher at the local high school.

We had an active Woman’s Missionary Union that kept us up to date on Southern Baptist mission activity and led us to pray for missionaries and support them through the Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings.

We had church business meetings, just after the monthly potluck luncheon, where every committee chairman brought a report.

We held an annual revival and the deacons picked the evangelist.

We sang hymns like “Power in the Blood” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”

We taught Sunday School from the Baptist Sunday School Board quarterlies.

We had Vacation Bible School, and kids from all the other churches in town came.

We sometimes had visits from “real live” missionaries who displayed trinkets from exotic countries, dressed in native dress, spoke the native language, and showed slides from the countries they had served.

I attended the monthly meetings of the Henry County Baptist Association.

I was a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I baptized believers by immersion.

Oh, and there were a few other things:

We used the lectionary.

We had women deacons.

We had an open membership policy.

When I think of that church I cannot imagine how we could have been any more Baptist, and so I’m not afraid that if we change our membership policy here we will suddenly—overnight—turn into Lutherans. But I realize I have an advantage over most of the members of First Baptist: I’ve experienced open membership, and I know…